Post #6 in my Australian Short Story Festival series

I found Donna Mazza’s “The Exhibit” a terrifying story to read. It starts with a pregnant narrator, Stacey, in a troubled relationship – ripe drama for a short story – but before long we realise the full picture: as part of a de-extinction project, her baby has been spliced with neanderthal DNA. The ordinariness of Stacey’s concerns about things like an unfriendly radiographer makes the scenario feel so much more real. It happens as it would in real life: the person at the centre of it not being told the full picture, not in control, at the mercy of radiographers and doctors, and quite remote from the scientists driving it. I’ve recently been through the anxiety and hope of my wife’s pregnancy and this story conveyed much of that experience but amplified it so well. It’s great literary science fiction, inhabiting the same dark territory as the Black Mirror television series.

“The Exhibit” appeared in Westerly 60.1 last year, but you can read it online here. Donna’s the author of the TAG Hungerford Award winning novel The Albanian. I’ll be appearing alongside her on the Australian Short Story Festival panel, Voices From the West on Saturday.